Monday, April 29, 2013

What if Other Planets Replaced Earth's Moon?

Neptune instead of the Moon

Space enthusiast, artist, and writer Ron Miller questions what the night sky would look like if the moon was replaced by one of our solar system's planets. His collection of manipulated images station planets, from the relatively minute Mercury to the enormous Jupiter, in place of Earth's moon. The simulated photos take into account the distance of the moon from Earth (approximately 240,000 miles) and re-imagine the natural satellite as its own celestial body.

Miller's series presents a normal view of the moon in the night sky accompanied by seven additional images, each featuring a different planet. In his creative quest to mimic each spectacular vision in all their glory, Miller bends his scientific reasoning of atmospheric composition and allows each of the planets to retain its chemical makeup and lustrous color. Regarding the gaseous planet Venus, the artist says, "We're pretending, of course, that Venus would still have the same atmospheric conditions if it were in essentially the same orbit as the Earth."

Due to his creative choice to focus mainly on the visual significance of replacing the moon with a planet, the images created project a surreal view of the night sky. With Jupiter being 40 times the size of the moon, it takes up nearly the entire sky, visually defining what space looks like from our point of view.